Chasm Separates 2 Movie Views of Mexican History

It’s rare to find films dealing with Mexican or Latin American history. Certain comets appear in the skies with greater frequency than such topics on the silver screen. So it’s a colossal cosmic coincidence that gives audiences this week the chance to see two movies in simultaneous release that focus on the same historical era--the 16th century Spanish conquest.

One is “La Otra Conquista,” a low-budget film made in Mexico by first-time director Salvador Carrasco. It’s a passionate drama distinguished by its historical accuracy and unusual indigenous perspective. The main character is an Aztec scribe who wages a harrowing underground battle to preserve his spiritual beliefs despite stubborn Spanish attempts to convert him to Catholicism.

The other film is “The Road to El Dorado,” a major animated production made by DreamWorks under the guidance of former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. It’s a cartoon that has fun with a fable about the legendary city of gold. Here, the main characters are two wisecracking Spanish con men who stumble into Indian civilization with the endearing comment: “It’s an entire city of suckers!”

Nothing unusual about the way Indians are portrayed in this Hollywood film. They’re all dumb, conniving, wicked or sexually manipulative characters who must be saved from their own savagery. I guess you could say this is true to tradition in its way: Hollywood has a long history of promoting ethnic stereotypes in the name of entertainment.

I don’t want to bore you with my bellyaching about demeaning portrayals of minorities in movies. That’s a lost cause because all of us get brainwashed into ignoring the offenses.

As a kid, I cheered for Davy Crockett in the Disney version of his heroic defense of liberty from the onslaught of Mexican hordes. And it’s hard to relinquish childhood heroes even after learning the adult truth that so-called freedom fighters at the Alamo were really defending the right to keep slaves.

So I didn’t leave angry after watching “El Dorado.” I was tickled by the banter between the two Spanish buddies. Got seduced by the curvaceous and calculating Indian princess named Chel. Became lulled by the catchy songs of Elton John.

I was having too much fun to fret about Indian stereotypes.

And I wasn’t alone. Latinos are flocking to see this popular movie without a care. Our apathy as an audience poses as serious a problem as the negative portrayals themselves, argues Olin Tezcatlipoca, a former film editor who’s been leading a lonely protest against the film’s racism.

“People have been programmed to kind of nullify themselves, to be passive,” says Tezcatlipoca, founder of Mexica Movement, an indigenous rights group that offers lectures in history and Nahuatl, the Aztec language, at its research center in Boyle Heights.

Tezcatlipoca, 50, was born in the Mexican state of Coahuila and grew up in East L.A. He legally changed his name in 1994 and bristled when I asked his Christian, Spanish name. “You’re kind of desecrating me,” he warned.

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The DreamWorks movie promotes ignorance, he argues. It gleefully glosses over the death of thousands of Indians slaughtered by the sword or by smallpox, a deadly Spanish import.

With a scathing review headlined “Genocide in Toon,” the Washington Post agreed, describing the movie as “essentially an animated Crosby-Hope picture set in a holocaust.”

DreamWorks has defended the film as a fantasy that’s just supposed to be silly. But Tezcatlipoca isn’t laughing. He says the film encourages prejudice in white viewers and reinforces self-loathing in all those “suckers” from Mexico and Central America.

“Our people already hate themselves as it is,” he says. “They’re already anti-indigenous.”

In his quixotic resistance to European culture, this self-anointed Mexica leader echoes the lead character of “La Otra Conquista,” whose name gets changed from Topiltzin to Tomas. At one point in the movie, the tortured Aztec hero proclaims his cultural defiance in Nahuatl: “I don’t adapt. I know who I am.”

Here’s a deep, haunting movie meant to promote dialogue about conflicting world views and multicultural survival. Those are themes as relevant today in Southern California as they are in Mexico or India, says director Carrasco, 31, who also wrote and edited the movie, which opens Wednesday in 75 theaters. “I am 100% Mexican and of Spanish descent too,” says the fair-skinned filmmaker. “So I feel respect and try to understand the two worlds inside and outside of me. I hope this conciliatory spirit comes across in the film.”

Yes. And I hope Hollywood is watching.

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com